Author: Ellen Bell

They’d finished re-surfacing North Parade by time I went for my walk. The hot stink of tar filled the air. I love the smell. It’s like petrol or rubber, faintly industrial, rich, cloying but somehow comforting. Big hulking men in high vis suits were collecting all the road signs and cones and slinging them into their open-topped vans. I walked a little behind one of them, marvelling at the expanse of his shoulders.

I often dream of toilets. Usually they are very public and underground. Last night’s dream was no exception, though this time there were two. With the first it was already occupied. I tried the door but there was no answer. Eventually, a small bustly kind of woman came out looking a little ashamed. There’s a problem, she said. Can you see about it? I went inside. There was a large, very pink, de-shelled langoustine on the ground by the loo. Had she deposited it there from inside of her? I put a cloth over it. She re-entered. Have you contacted management about it? she asked. Then I was in Switzerland and crossing a bridge whose path lead directly into a café that appeared to be closed. (There was a a large piece of paper on the ground with the hand-written phrase ‘there is no coffee being served’ on it.) A couple of men sat at a cloth-covered table. I asked if there was a ladies. One of them pointed at a curtain over which was a little wooden sign that I thought was ‘women’ in Swiss. I pulled aside the curtain and found a tiny toilet with sink and bowl. I bent my head to enter. You can’t fit in there, another of the men said. I proceeded into the room and woke up.

She answered. It took me by surprise. We’ve just come back from a rainy walk, she said. I could hear them in the background, their tiny voices echoing around the small house. She tells me his favourite word is biscuit.

Someone appears to be living in the empty house on St David’s Road. I’ve seen a light on in an upper window (the lampshade is one of those circular paper ones so it looks like a floating moon), and it was on again this morning. A neighbour described the owner (a local property developer) to him as a ‘knob’. Small town feuds are rife around here, it seems.

I woke from a dream in which I was having a nightmare. You know the kind when you are trying to scream and you can’t form a sound. I was sleeping outside our front door and the outer door opened and a man walked in. I was terrified. He was all in white and looked like someone from a Bauhaus-designed ballet or dance. He was almost cubist in shape. He looked like a ghoul, a cubist ghoul on which the stage-paint had streaked. If I scream, I thought, perhaps he will go away. But he stayed, skulking in the corner of the hallway, staring at me.

He read out her text to me. Apparently he opened his eyes twice and squeezed the nurse’s hand. Will he regain consciousness? Will he be the same? His daughter thinks he will bounce back. He doesn’t. Let him not be in pain or distress.

I walked in the late morning, in the sun and it was glorious. I had to keep blinking my eyes against the glare (wearing sun glasses with a face mask, as I found to my cost, was impossible. I’d wondered why people had gone about the ‘misting up’.) I felt like a troglodyte finally coming up to the surface. Heaven (even with all the people).

In my dream she was still a little girl and I was distressed because I didn’t know how to play with her, what games to think up or offer her. My father was there, though I’m not sure he was much help or even interested. G was also there, in the background, along with several other people. I think we were all in a holiday let together. There was much coming and going and discussions about meals. Someone was looking after her better than I was doing and I felt it.

No walk this morning and I am bereft. I miss the morning air on my face but the ice was too much.

I woke at 12.00 am and was taken over by fear, fear of everything and nothing. Seeing his face helps. Always.

There was a smell of Germolene in my bathroom this morning and we don’t use it. Was it her? I hope not, I’d rather she was gone to some place better. Or was it coming through the walls or tiles from a neighbour?

The flat has now been fully cleaned, my tea is in my cup and I’ve interviews to set up. I like to work but the fear of failure is ever present. Ho hum.

I needed some comfort (no bakery on a Sunday) and felt a fillip of joy when I thought I saw the lights from a fishing vessel coming into the harbour. I walked a little slower so that I would see its entry. Its lights were full on, though they were white rather than the range of blue, red and yellow that I usually see. Then the started to come towards me. How can that be? I thought, the channel into the harbour doesn’t lead that way. It wasn’t a boat but an ambulance, with its lights full on. Were they having a jaunt down to the harbour, a small respite from a long night? I was disappointed.

The snow came. It looks so beautiful in the darkness, its whiteness occasionally caught by the street lights.

The promise of a commission is a delight but oh the fear comes in too.

We had a contretemps about my fear that there might be ice when I walked. Just take your phone, he said. And I said no. It’s hard to explain, it isn’t rational, I just like to have that hour or so incommunicado. What if you fell and hit your head? he said (his friend’s recent catastrophic fall still in his mind). Well I wouldn’t be able to call you anyway then, would I? I said. I understand him and I understand me. He let it go but not before adding, ‘you’re pig-headed by the way, not pig-ignorant’.

I listen to a request show on the radio in the afternoons, not wanting to turn on my laptop again. Yesterday a man called Nigel from Keynesham called in asking for a something from The Barber of Seville by Rossini as he and his partner Ruth were making marmalade.

On my way home I hear two young lads talking from the pavement across the road, their heads close together, deep in conversation. ‘Sounds like she had her own stuff going on,’ one of them said. His friend nodded.

There was an alarm ringing from one of the shops on Great Darkgate Street. I heard it when I began my walk and it was still going when I made my way home. The shop that it was coming from was all boarded up. There was a distinct smell of soap or was it shampoo as I walked down the hill. Someone had just been there before me.

I heard a bird as I walked the Prom. Was is a blackbird or could it have been a nightingale?

They’ve turned the lights off at the Pier, no more intermittent red, yellow, blue and purple. It makes for a more dismal blackness. And there’s no moon.

The front garden of the house on Llanbadarn Road where they lost a tree when it fell into the road has its yearly flush of snowdrops appearing. It gladdens my heart to see it. The uprooting of the tree last year (was it last year?) has meant that the blanket of white is a little more patchy then before but nevertheless it is joyful in this January blackness.

He brought home some daffodils though I wanted some hyacinths. I love the smell and am always more comfortable with something growing than something cut off from its source of life. Yet, the daffs are lovely and I am appreciative. I spread them amongst as many vases and vessels as I can. I even have some in here. They open so soon in this warmth. I like the bud stage best with all that promise of honeyed-yellowness to come.

There is a Christmas tree in the window of a front room along North Parade. It has been denuded of all lights and decorations yet it remains still green and fresh. Will they keep it forever?

What comfort there is in pattern.

And there was no ice though I took my stick.

I planned to make one, though I’ve never made one before. I was with a group of people, living in some sort of a house, HH was there. I started to make a list of the ingredients in my head. There was a fridge with a glass door and one of the women there kept leaving her food outside of it. I suggested that putting it inside might be better. Oh, do you think so? she said. Then I was in a park needing the loo which was surrounded by people, a lot of them were Orthodox Jews dressed in very dated clothes from the 1950s, some of them were dressed up like cowboys and hillbillies too. I was scared of getting to close and catching Covid-19 so I didn’t go. Then I thought where am I going to get cherries? Then I woke and realised that I never did make the clafoutis.

There is a lake of water outside our front door and beneath our downstairs neighbour’s window. He said that he met them after his walk. They were going to the surgery for her to get her jab. No rain when I walked but the wind was mean and cold. Still winter. I think of those whose homes are flooded. Keep them warm and safe and dry and may their homes be soon habitable. Winter is a hard thing.

The participants were all middle-aged and elderly women. I was either an observer or someone who was trying to make an art piece about one or all of them. Either way it was frustrating me. I wandered from desk to desk looking over their work. Some were doing landscapes, others still lives. I don’t know why I felt out of sorts. There were also a group of them sitting at a table. I woke then to the usual dark and the usual struggling to put my lowness in order. The rain was relentless this morning. I got drenched. I wore two coats, one on top of the other and was very very hot. It was a trudging sort of walk, my body and my head didn’t want to do it. A few cars were about, a doctor, the University warden and a couple of others. A man was out walking his dog. Otherwise I was alone. He won’t walk, it’s too wet. A head down get on with work day then. Fine.

We had a small falling out last night over money. I try to control him, and he, rightly enough, doesn’t like it. Why should he? I try to explain but it sounds ridiculous, as it is. He does understand and we reach a temporary impasse until the next time. Marriage is about finding a middle ground and listening. Is it not?